375: The Consistency Conundrum: Navigating Health Habits Through Midlife’s Hormonal Changes w/ Laini Gray

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:00
Ladies, are you tired of feeling like your health routines are at the mercy of your hormones? If you’re a midlife woman who is struggling to maintain your health practices because your body seems to have its own agenda. This podcast is for you. We are about to flip the script on what consistency actually looks like as we travel through the menopausal transition, and we are going to show you how to start working with your body rather than against it.

Courtney Townley 0:26
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:53
Hello, my friends and welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast. I am your host, Courtney Townley, and joining me today is my dear friend and colleague, Laini Gray. In case you missed the announcement a few episodes ago, Laini will be joining me for in depth conversations about all things midlife, because I adore spending time with her, and I so deeply respect her brain and how it works, and I think that our I’ve said this before, but our zones of genius really complement each other.

Courtney Townley 1:21
So welcome, Laini, I’m so glad you’re here.

Laini Gray 1:23
Well, thank you, Courtney. I’m glad to be here.

Courtney Townley 1:25
Yeah, and today, we’re diving into one of my all time favorite topics, which is consistency. But more specifically, I titled this episode the consistency conundrum, navigating health habits through midlife hormonal changes.

Courtney Townley 1:39
I chose this topic because this is really the meat of the work that I do with my clients, helping women to become more consistent with healthy behaviors, not just for like six weeks or 12 weeks, but ongoing for the rest of their life. And you know, consistency is not really a sexy topic, but when you really get into the heart of the conversation. There are so many intricacies that go into this, and one of them, which I think is massively overlooked, is how chemistry plays a role in our ability to be consistent, and consistency is a rumble for every human that exists right like if we were consistent, easily, think of all the things we’d be doing right now. We’d have books now, we’d have podcasts, we’d build businesses. We’d be so incredibly healthy, but that’s not how consistency rolls.

Courtney Townley 2:31
And consistency, I think, is an especially tricky skill set for midlife women because of the chemistry that’s changing and the stress load that we are kind of typically carrying around this age and stage of our life. So I want to share some stats at the start of this podcast today to just highlight how hormonal changes affect a woman’s ability to be consistent with her health practices.

Courtney Townley 3:00
So according to a 2023 study in the journal menopause, up to 85% of women experience significant disruptions in their sleep patterns during perimenopause and into menopause, with energy fluctuations being, of course, hugely a problem from that right, like we have a lot of energy challenges that stem from that, and it also affects our ability to exercise and apply effort in areas that we’re trying to improve in, like diet, like mindset, like all of the other things.

Courtney Townley 3:33
A 2024 review in The Journal of Clinical Medicine revealed that 72% of women in perimenopause reported difficulties maintaining consistent meal timing and portion control, largely due to hormonal fluctuations affecting hunger signals. And then one other stat I want to share with you is research from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health indicated that 68% of menopausal women struggle to maintain consistent hydration levels due to changes in thirst perception and increased urinary frequency.

Courtney Townley 4:13
So first of all, whoever knew there were so many journals like there are so many journals of medicine and menopause and all the things which I just find interesting, but these stats really clearly underscore the very real challenges that midlife women face in maintaining consistency with their health practices. And these challenges aren’t just in their head, but they’re rooted in significant physiological change.

Courtney Townley 4:37
So I thought we would start Laini with talking about just what consistency means, because I think that part of the reason consistency is so unsexy and not something that people are super excited about is because of the way we think about it. Yeah, so I’m gonna just kind of point this to you to start, and I’ll certainly chime. In on my own thoughts. But what are some of the things, the ways that we think about consistency, that you think make it harder than it needs to be.

Laini Gray 5:09
Obviously, we think about as something we have to do, yeah, it’s more of, oh, I have to do this. I have to get up at this time. I have to do my workout here. I have to meal prep. I have to right, or I should right, or Yes, I should be counting my calories, or I should be logging my desk or that, or I should get more sleep, or I should and so it’s not fun. It’s not fun like all of the joy literally falls out of it when we’re shooting ourselves to death right then, oh my gosh, I have to, and it’s just a total mindset shift. It’s not something we’re enjoying or looking forward to or understanding, and it becomes really frustrating and really difficult, and something you fight against, yeah,

Courtney Townley 5:47
like the inner toddler comes out full force when someone you know tells us we have to or we should do something, it’s like we dig our heels in, yeah,

Laini Gray 5:56
which is interesting, because when I work with women, I often say we have To treat yourself like a toddler. They need a schedule. How do they feel best? They feel best when they eat on a regular routine. They feel best when they move. They feel best when they get sleep and what? Oh, yeah. We have to get back into routine consistency, because we feel better. But we really have to shift the conversation and understand what does that mean? Yeah, you know, it’s not, it’s not trapping us, it’s actually allowing us more freedom. But how do we teach that? And that’s why I love what you do.

Courtney Townley 6:26
I love that you speak to that that freedom piece. Because this is something that I push back on a lot, because I often hear a lot of my clients use the language that consistency means that I am going to lack freedom. It means that I have to be so rigid in my approach, or so disciplined that there’s no room for spontaneity, and I can’t just do what I want to do, and I challenge it for so many reasons, but the way that I push back is that consistency with the right practices At the right time actually affords us so much freedom, freedom from self doubt, freedom from regret, right, freedom from beating ourselves up all the time for not following through with what we said we would do like we fail to recognize that, that there’s a lot of freedom on the other side of consistently showing up totally.

Courtney Townley 7:20
A couple other things that I hear a lot, and I’m sure you do too, that kind of gets in the way of us wanting to lean into developing consistency. Is, a lot of us think about it as doing the same thing over and over until we die, right? Like, so not sexy. Like, who wants to do that? No at all. No. Nobody wants to do that. And then I already mentioned rigidity, but just kind of feeling like we have to be perfect in our efforts, and we can’t be flexible in our approach. I think that really is a huge barrier to showing up for ourselves on the regular. So I kind of think of that as the old way of looking at consistency. What are some of the like, the ways that you promote your clients to think about consistency. What is, how would you define it at this stage of your life

Laini Gray 8:05
Looking for the things that bring a little bit of joy into your life or make you feel good or nourish you on a daily basis, right? And that doesn’t have to be the same thing every day, right? Like, to your point, we’ve grown up or grown up. We’ve grown up. Courtney,

Courtney Townley 8:18
I don’t know if I’ve grown up, but

Laini Gray 8:22
we’ve gone through the last two or three decades thinking we have to get up, we go to the gym. We do this every time we have this routine, right? So the really cool thing about midlife is we get this invitation to let go of the rigidity, to let go of those things, because we may not have school schedules anymore some of those things, and we can start to weave in things that bring us joy and still maintaining some of those consistent behaviors.

Laini Gray 8:45
So for me, I don’t do the early morning workouts anymore. I weave them in at different times during the day, and that is amazing for me. Or I focus more on sleep and walking and getting outside things that I couldn’t do at an earlier stage of my life, but being flexible to that, and then having that moment to check in and go, Okay, wait. What do I need to kind of reprioritize? Or where did I fall off? Oh, because I was really liking not doing my workouts, you know, but having some flexibility to change, and that’s okay, and that’s what’s really great, absolutely.

Courtney Townley 9:17
So two things I want to just speak to about what you just said is number one, and I learned this from you, right? That whole that really simple question that is just oh so powerful, is this nourishing or is this depleting? And when we look at how we’re spending our resources in the day, which, by the way, a lot of women aren’t doing, we’re just living reactively, and we’re never taking time to reassess, but if and when we take time to look back at how we lived our day, how much of what you did in the day was nourishing you and how much was depleting you.

Courtney Townley 9:49
Because if that ratio is really off, it’s no wonder why you feel like hell, and you’re certainly not doing your chemistry any favors, right if you’re leaning towards the depleting side. So I think. That question, is this nourishing? Did I mostly live in a nourishing way or a depleting way? Today is a really powerful one. And the second thing, when you’re talking about routine and how we kind of grew up following school schedules and looking up to people as authorities, and I think that does create a lot of rule following behavior.

Courtney Townley 10:19
And I would say, in my life, I even took it a step further, because I was a dancer, and my whole pursuit of athleticism was built around people telling me what to do, and I wasn’t trying to do it in a way that was nourishing. I was trying to do it in a way that got me accolades and attention and roles.

Laini Gray 10:38
Yeah. Oh, completely

Courtney Townley 10:40
right. So you carry that into, like, midlife. I mean, even though, you know I was, I haven’t been dancing professionally for 20 years or 25 years, but still that that behavior is so ingrained in me, because it was the first 20 years of my life, yeah, and so just realizing that, okay, there’s no one here, I have to prove anything to. There is no one who is an authority on my life to the extent that I am, and that allows me to actually show up in a much more profound way for myself, when I can drop the seeking of who I need to follow and what rules I need to follow, and who is the authority on my life. Yes, you look in the mirror

Laini Gray 11:19
totally well, and then I’m just thinking of that. Mine was a little different. I didn’t have a physical goal that I was always shooting for, like a dancer, but I was a straight A student, yeah. And so if it was not 100% it was not good enough. And so I was always judging myself like it was worse if I got a 97% that was worse than getting a B, because I was like, Really, I only missed one thing, right? And so it was really interesting. So getting my masters in my 40s and having somebody say, Laini, C’s get degrees.

Laini Gray 11:49
Never heard that. That’s funny, right? Because

Laini Gray 11:52
I’d always been rewarded for being the 4.0 student and getting straight A’s and all. And I had to, like, step back and go, nobody’s judging me. If there’s some shoes out on the living room floor. Nobody cares what grade I got. Do you know what I mean? It’s really but how do we step out of that? That’s the conversation. How do we step away from that and know that we can still navigate life and be successful and have purpose without this really weird perfectionism and strict rigidity sees get

Courtney Townley 12:18
degrees. That’s gonna be my new like, I’m carrying that forward with me. One of the things that I promote a lot with my client, my clients is b minus work, like we are so focused on always getting the a plus, like doing a plus work, to the point of things almost being over analyzed, things not being delivered into the world, like your art or your workouts, or the things that you want to be showing up for, that is constantly striving for a plus work, I think, is a recipe for inconsistency totally so I love that. C’s get degrees, carrying that with me.

Courtney Townley 12:49
I did want to share, before we move away from this, one of the ways that I like to think about consistency, and this is probably one of my favorite ways, is that consistency is a love language. And I heard, I’ve heard this from a lot of different authors over the years, and this is not my idea, but the first time I ever heard that was from a poet. Her name’s, I think it’s Acamea, is her poet name, and it just it hit me so hard that it’s so true, we show up consistently for the things that we care about.

Courtney Townley 13:23
And ladies, I know that the concept of self love can be just really radical and out there and so unattainable where you may be right now, and that’s okay, but looking at consistency as an act like a love language really just gives you the opportunity to consider, like, what are the things that I would really encourage someone I did love to do? And here’s the deal, love does not always look the same. So I’m gonna use my kid as an example here, right? I have a son who’s 15 years old, and sometimes loving him as hard as I do, looks like yesterday, picking him up from school at 930 in the morning because he was really sick, and letting him come home and just rest and take a bath and do all the things he needed to do just to get well. And sometimes love looks like, look you’re not going to summer camp if you can’t pull your act together in these areas. Yeah, right.

Courtney Townley 14:22
It’s like holding the feet to the fire and being the helping hand up and learning like when you need to apply, which, because I think sometimes we hear self love, or we hear like consistency is a love language, and we interpret it as, oh, I’m supposed to be just like, really forgiving and loving to my Yes, loving to yourself all the time. But doesn’t mean you’re letting yourself get away with your own BS, right? Because if I let my son constantly do some of the things that he does, I’m actually hurting him. Yeah, I’m not helping him, and so are the things you’re being consistent with helping. You or harming you? I think that’s also a really great question. I think so too. So we’re definitely getting away, I think at midlife I hope, I hope people listening, especially to this show, are trying to get away from rules and regulations and really trying to lean in more to this whole idea of self leadership in the health arena.

Courtney Townley 15:18
Because I think that’s what consistency at midlife demands of us. It demands that we stop looking to all the people to tell us what to do, and start really tuning in and asking ourselves, like, what is my resource availability like? Can I push hard today, or do I need to back off a little bit in general, I think midlife is a great time to become a leader rather than a follower, totally. And you mentioned this, and I just want to reiterate it, that in order to be consistent, we have to be flexible. We have to be willing to be adaptable, based on our resource availability, based on what else is going on in our life, if we are always rigid again, we’re going to just crash and burn. So the meat of this conversation I want to get into, and I really want to kind of put this in your court, because I think this is something that you do such a beautiful job of, is helping women to understand the chemical shifts that are happening at midlife that are influencing the things that we want to be showing up for consistently.

Courtney Townley 16:27
And just before we go there, I just want to say, not only do I teach a lot of courses on consistency, but I do have a book coming out in the fall on on this whole topic, and next month, which will be March, March 3 through April, 3, I am hosting the full Consistency Code course, which basically addresses five major barriers to consistency. And these are main barriers at midlife. The first one is the one we’re addressing today, which is chemistry. But the other four barriers are lack of awareness. We’re living life so fast and furious, we’re never stopping to pay attention, to be accountable to how we’re actually showing up. We we really rumble with reactivity. So we’re living our life very reactively versus proactively, and I think that really boils down to being intentional about how we’re spending our resources. So I definitely think lack of organization and structure can be a huge barrier to consistency, lack of thought management, lack of emotional agility, definitely, like when we don’t know how to process and manage emotions, we can definitely prevent ourselves from showing up and then the inability to realign. So I mention all of those because, although it’s like a really big topic today, we’re leaning into that chemistry piece. So based on that, let me say this first before I forget, if you’re interested in doing the full Consistency Code course, those of you who are listening in in March, it’s a four week course, we spread it out over five weeks, because we do. We do. We have one week in the middle that’s just for implementation. But you can head on over to graceandgrit.com/thecode to find out more about that program. Once again, that’s graceandgrit.com/thecode.

Courtney Townley 18:15
Okay, so Laini, why does consistency become more challenging on a chemical level as we shift through the menopausal transition.

Courtney Townley 18:25
So it’s an interesting topic that most of us don’t know is going to happen in our life. We arrive here and all of a sudden, things don’t feel right, and all of a sudden, I’m struggling to have energy to do things. I’m not motivated, I’m kind of moody. I feel like I’m depressed, like everything kind of shifts, you know, like, what’s wrong with me? Am I broken? Yeah, right. And we’re trying to keep these these old behaviors and old habits, and they’re not serving us. But the reality is, our whole physiology is changing in this menopausal shift. So one of the things tying in this consistent action is our menstrual cycle.

Laini Gray 18:59
So for our whole 20s, 30s, early 40s, we’ve had this consistent menstrual cycle happening. So on a monthly basis, we are used to the consistent ebbs and flows of our estrogen and progesterone and some other hormones, and when we have that consistency that helps our mood, that supports our energy, that supports our drive to get things done, our libido, our excitement for life. And so we just we take it for granted that we have this consistent hormone cycle going through our life and through our bodies, and then we enter our usually late 30s, early 40s. There start to become some shifts. So we start making less progesterone. Eventually we have fluctuating estrogen, and then we have both low progesterone and estrogen, and during this time, we lose that consistent hormone rhythm that’s normally happening when we have a menstrual cycle and things become a little chaotic.

Laini Gray 19:56
What’s really interesting, Mary, it’s on. Call it a roller coaster, you know, for lack of a better term. But the reality is, these two hormones influence all 12 systems within the body, every single system within the body, and for midlife women specifically, and talking about this consistent action, what that shows up is sleep isn’t as great. Okay? So without sleep, then we have more appetite cravings, so we’re not eating well, a lot of us are starving. People really end up being just like, oh my gosh, I am ravenous, hungry and I’m exhausted at the same time, and I hate my family and I hate my life all you know, it all comes at once. Yeah, when we’re like, what’s going on? But that’s really what’s happening is these hormones are shifting. They’re affecting our chemistry on every level, and so it just doesn’t feel right, but we’ve lost our consistent hormone cycle, and so now it really is a time to listen to lean into consistent habits, because the hormones aren’t there the same way they have been previously. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 20:56
absolutely. And you take all of that hormonal fluctuation, and you add it at a time in life where we have overflowing schedules more than we ever have, we’re trying to jam more into our day than we ever have before we have overflowing stress buckets, so we’re living the most stressful time in our life, usually at midlife. We have so much more responsibility than we’ve ever had in our life and simultaneously, we lack skill sets because we never learned how to manage our brains, we never learned how to manage our emotions, we never learned how to schedule in a way that actually preserves some white space. So it’s not just like every moment of every day is jam packed full of activity.

Courtney Townley 21:43
And a lot of women I find this, a lot in the clients that I work with have gotten to a place where they are so consistently busy and stressed out, they’re very uncomfortable being anything but so the second they create some room in their schedule for themselves, they’re incredibly uncomfortable, yeah, yeah, because it’s new, right?

Laini Gray 22:05
Completely. We’ve had this conversation for decades. Courtney, this horse bucket, and that’s the interesting thing about the physiology, is we’ve been wearing ourselves out for decades, right? But little like unknown to us, we had this ebb and flow of hormones that really gave us resilience, yeah? And we got away with not doing all the things we should have. And so I will tell women, remember all those things you thought you should be doing? Yeah, in your 20s, 30s, early 40s, well, in menopause, perimenopause, it’s time to, like, put your feet down and really do those things, because your body is going to say it’s time we don’t have the same resilience level. We don’t have the same hormone levels. So now I’m gonna have to lean on you to actually learn these skill sets and put them into practice.

Courtney Townley 22:50
Yeah, I don’t work with a lot of women anymore in their 20s, but I do have a few of them, and I tell them all the time, you have no idea what a service you are doing for yourself, because what’s especially challenging at midlife is trying to develop new behaviors right at the at a time totally when, again, chemistry is wildly dysregulated, and we don’t have a lot of practice of these things in our history. And so it would be challenging anyway, but then, on top with of the hormonal chaos, it just makes it extra challenging. Yeah, so definitely the dropping of the hormones and then also the rising of stress levels is just a very interesting recipe for really promoting lack of consistency. And then,

Laini Gray 23:39
to your point, right? We’ve already set ourselves up to kind of have this plate that is way too full. We’re not taking time for ourselves. We don’t have these skill sets. Everything is really stressful, and then you alluded to it, but the reality is, in midlife, the stresses change, yeah, and they become really different and more, you know, more challenging things that you haven’t handled before, right? So you have a whole new set of these challenges and life stresses, and without that consistent behavior, those things, ways that you’re nourishing yourself, it can be a really crazy time where you just feel like you don’t know where to go, where to turn or what’s happening in your life. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 24:15
so the way that I teach health, this at this stage of my career, is really a two fold equation, and maybe you’ve heard me say this before, but I really look at it, and this is the way I teach my clients as an exercise in number one, reducing unnecessary stressors, and then also simultaneously leaning into intentional stressors. Because exercise is an intentional stressor. Learning new skill sets is an intentional stressor, starting that career that’s been on your heart for 40 years is an intentional stressor. But they if they’re approached in the right way, they bring more life into our life, but when you are operating your life in a way that’s very depleted. Thing your stress bucket is overflowing because you have so many unnecessary stressors.

Courtney Townley 25:06
So what we want to talk about with you now, I’m referring to you the listener. What we want to talk to you now is is really helping you to redirect your attention to what you can control, even when your hormones are unpredictable and life is chaotic and stressful. There are some, I think there are definitely strategies that we can put into play that definitely help to soften the struggle. And the first one, Laini, I really would love you to speak to I’ve done podcast episodes on this in the past. In fact, I just want to note I did interview Dr Mary Claire Haver back in episode 362 which is all about hormone replacement therapy. She calls it MRT, right? Menopause, yeah, they call it MRT, but I would love you to just speak a little bit to hormone replacement therapy, because, number one, we’re not experts on the topic, like, we’re not giving medical advice here, but finding an HRT specialist is absolutely one way to lower unnecessary stress, because you’re bringing that chemistry back online.

Laini Gray 26:16
Yeah. So one of the physicians that I just adore, her name is Dr Felice Gersh, and she does this brilliant explanation about hormones, especially hormones in women. And the reason we have such high amounts of them is so that if we are to become pregnant, we have to have a really strong cardiovascular system and all of these systems of our body, because we’re going to take care of not one, but two humans during this pregnancy state, so we really have to be very strong and full of life. So she says we’ve done a disservice to women calling them sex hormones, because they are truly life hormones.

Laini Gray 26:52
And what happens during menopause is, as these hormones decline, they affect every system of the body, and that’s where rapid aging starts to happen, our cognitive decline, our cardiovascular decline, all of these risk factors begin when those hormones kind of leave the situation. Now that is a natural occurrence. Menopause is natural, but we are also living longer, and we have more goals in life. We have things that we want to do. We want to be healthier. And so finding a practitioner, a physician that can work with you to have a really well educated discussion about replacing your hormones is a great place to start, because we have more research, better research about, yes, this is a really important part of women’s health, not you don’t have to do it. It’s not required, but it’s something you should have a conversation with your provider about and move into doing that,

Courtney Townley 27:41
yeah, and be prepared that your provider may not be equipped to have this conversation with you, because it is pretty abysmal, the lack of education surrounding hormone replacement therapy, and also just what the chemistry of the menopausal transition. So I don’t know. Laini, if you have specific resources, I know that if you go to the pause life.com which is Mary Claire havers website, she has a whole page that’s dedicated to ways of finding providers in your area. Do you have any suggestions on that front?

Laini Gray 28:12
That’s a great I usually have my clients reach out to their friends. Who are you working with? Exactly to your friends? Do you have somebody that’s on HRT Who are they working with? Do they like them? Right? And then this is that part of midlife where things are shifting, and we’ve had this menstrual cycle and this consistency with our hormones, we’re kind of known as the creator and the go get things done. Girl.

Laini Gray 28:32
In the second half, we really do get a chance to step back and be the wise woman and tap into our wisdom. And wisdom would say, don’t go with the first one. It’s okay to shop around and find the right practitioner, and it’s okay to learn about yourself and your physiology so you can make an educated decision. Yeah, right, and that’s but you have to slow down to be able to do that. But yeah, really understanding take it upon yourself to learn more about your physiology. Because it is true. I just did a an event last week, and I had woman after woman say they felt dismissed when they went to their provider about menopausal symptoms, and they’re just not feeling like themselves. And it’s one of those things we have to do our shopping. We have to figure out who we’re going to, you know, work with, and that may not be the first person you talk to, and that’s that’s okay.

Courtney Townley 29:20
And I think too, what I hear in that is, is this, this level of self trust, also that we have to tap into at midlife, because, like I was saying at the beginning of the episode, nobody knows your life the way that you do. Nobody knows your physiology the way that you do. Like we can look at chemistry, we can look at data, but you’re the only person living in your body who knows the actual experience of being in your body? And so I think midlife is an amazing opportunity to start really tapping into your self trust and your self knowing. So in terms of strategies, what else would you recommend to like, what comes up for you when you think of a woman? Link through the hormonal chaos of midlife, who also wants to be taking great care of herself on a pretty regular basis. I

Courtney Townley 30:07
think one of the hardest things to do is take a look in the mirror and love yourself regardless of weight changes. Yeah, okay, because so many of us have lived in this box where the scale is what matters, and if our pants are tight, that’s just a you know, there must be a terrible person those kind of things. And the reality is, there are going to be some ebbs and flows. Not everybody’s going to feel the same, but some of us are going to gain a little weight. Some of us aren’t going to feel great. So we have to take that. We’ve already talked about this, Courtney, but the scale really needs to not be a part of this transition. We need to start assessing, how many days can I do my strength training? Right?

Laini Gray 30:40
Because I’m feeling a little all over the place. Guess what? Strength training is going to make me feel strong and powerful and confident? That’s huge. Yeah, I’m going to spend more time outside, do more walking, do more time with my girlfriends, because that’s where we bring that energy and life back into our life that make it much easier to navigate than getting on the scale by my pants don’t fit. This is awful, and just complaining about everything, it’s really an invitation to try something new and look at what’s in front of us from a different perspective. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 31:10
and again, I hear like that question, is this nourishing for me, or is it depleting for one woman, getting on the scale occasionally might be nourishing to her because she’s not making it mean horrible things about herself, but another woman, it’s super depleting because she’s telling herself such horrible things it’s really not a great thing to be doing, right and just to your point, the last conversation that you and I had on this podcast, which would have been Episode 373 was all about this Topic. We talked all about the limitations of the scale and other ways to start really measuring progress along your health journey at midlife. So for the listeners, if you missed that episode, and that’s something that you would like to dive deeper into, go back to episode 373, and listen to that, yeah,

Laini Gray 31:59
and just jump, jumping off of that same topic, when we talk about the consistent hormones from our menstrual cycle, and now we’re in this kind of chaotic place where the hormones aren’t doing anything they’re supposed to. They’re up, they’re down, they’re all over. We’re very misbehaved, right? Oh my gosh, this is really the time when we get the chance to create our own rhythm. So this is, you know, our hormones. They may not fall in line as well as we’d like them to, but we can create rhythms. We can eat at regular meal times. We can do more strength training less, you know, excessive cardio. We can do more quiet time, more rest, more meditation, more reading, all of those things that really give us energy or make us feel confident that we’re doing something good for ourselves. It’s an invitation to step up, right, to take action, not to. And a lot of us feel like, oh gosh, everything’s falling apart. I’m just gonna do nothing. Yeah, like the exercise isn’t working, so I might as well just not do it. What I

Courtney Townley 32:59
appreciate so much about what you’re saying, and this, this is what I’m hearing, is that just the human body is so trainable, and so even though your chemistry for a period of time might be wildly disrupted when we are consistently feeding ourselves, when we are consistently moving our bodies, it helps to restructure that chemistry. Yes.

Courtney Townley 33:21
So, because what a great example of this. Because I have heard this my entire career, is women saying to me, I just don’t like to eat breakfast. Yeah, right. And having been in a world of fat loss for so many years, and specifically when someone’s trying to lose weight, one of the big challenges is we have to eat enough protein and calories in the day to feed the right tissue and to shed the tissue that we don’t want, and part of that requires that we go into our workouts with well nourished bodies, which means that we probably should be eating breakfast before we go to train. Now I’m not saying if you intermittent fast, if you don’t eat breakfast, and that works for you, fine, but I will tell you this, throughout my entire career, I have seen people light up their metabolisms by starting their day by eating breakfast, yeah, right. And they prove to themselves that, oh, wow, I do actually have an appetite for breakfast. But because for so many years, I practiced not eating, I trained my body to not be hungry. First thing,

Laini Gray 34:24
yeah, no, it’s completely true. And then, oh my, my metabolism is slowing down, and all of this. Well, that’s probably because of the input it’s been getting from you for years. It’s a great way to say it the input. I mean, it really is and so, and that’s to your point, though, most women will say I’m not hungry in the morning. Well, because you haven’t been feeding yourself, and so your body doesn’t burn through the calories like it should. Because it’s like, we only get two meals a day, yeah, right? Or those kind of things. It’s really interesting when you start having those regular meals again, that oh my gosh, like, this morning, I’ma go. I was starving. It was 7am I’m like, Okay, I guess I’m eating breakfast, right? And then the other thing too. Of being so fatigued or not being motivated, a simple thing, like eating breakfast, can fuel your workout in a way that you have no idea. You’re like, oh my gosh, I have so much energy to go get my workout yet right, or to do something different, or to make it through my day. When we’re talking about energy that really we have to put food in our body to have energy. Yeah, absolutely.

Courtney Townley 35:21
Like, literally, go back to, like, eighth grade Krebs cycle, right? Like you need input to create ATP, like you need the food coming in to produce energy.

Laini Gray 35:30
And the hormones are definitely a piece of this. But we have to re establish that without the foundations, the hormones can’t do anything anyway. The hormones are the icing on the cake, so jumping in and getting some HRT or learning how to support yourself or replacing the hormones. Brilliant, because they do a lot of things, but they don’t miraculous make it miraculously make you have muscles. Yeah? They don’t miraculously give you energy. You still have to do all those foundational lifestyle habits to put them to good use. Yeah,

Laini Gray 35:58
it’s kind of like which came first the chicken or the egg. It’s like we need to be consistent in order to help our chemistry out. Yeah. And we also need to recognize that our chemistry is going to create some barriers for that consistency. So we kind of need to meet ourselves in that space. I always say between grace and grit. Sometimes you need to pull back. Sometimes you need to push ahead. And which it is, is going to require some experimentation, like I know a lot of women who consistently give themselves permission to not move their body because they didn’t sleep well. Well, you do that enough times. And I mean, you’re not doing yourself any favors, because your body actually sleeps better when you’re moving more, right? And you’re creating a whole nother issue.

Courtney Townley 36:44
Now, not only are you not sleeping, but you’re losing muscle, and you’re not giving your body all of that movement it needs to stay healthy. And so I think the dosage matters, like skipping a workout or reworking your plan on occasion, makes a whole lot of sense, but doing it as a habit is something entirely different, right? Because you don’t necessarily want to lean to into the discomfort of doing the thing right, understanding

Laini Gray 37:11
that, right, if you’re consistently feeling too fatigued to work out, yeah, is it the workout that you should be taking a break from, or is it something else? Yeah? Is it work stress? Is it being on the TV like Courtney I was just talking when I spend a lot of time at the computer, my physiology doesn’t feel good. My neck is tight, my eyes hurt. Everything hurts, right? So is it should I not work out because I set up the computer? No, I probably should work out. That would be the better way to offset what I’ve just done all day,

Courtney Townley 37:37
right? Right? The power of opposites, right? Yeah. Like, I used to say to people all the time, like, as a personal trainer, like, do it wrong first, so you can really feel what it’s like, and then let’s do the opposite right. And usually the opposite is where we need to be spending more time, because part of the reason you’re in pain is because you’re perpetually repeating these patterns. So a couple things that I wanted to recommend as strategies as well, and I’m sure you’ll have some things to add on to this, but I think just checking in with our resource availability day to day is really a powerful practice. Did you sleep well last night? How much time energy and mental bandwidth do you actually have today, because you might have a plan to go work out at the gym for an hour and a half, but your resource availability is saying, I’ll give you 30 minutes. Yeah, right.

Courtney Townley 38:30
And so that’s where we can still show up if we’re willing to be flexible, right? I would also say something that I have found very helpful in my own life, and a lot of clients seem to find this helpful is the that self care practices that you tend to resist the most. Number one, they’re probably the things you need the most. Yeah, okay, like that that I have seen that pattern throughout my career, but trying to put them at a time of the day where you have more resource availability. So if I’m always resisting my workout, working out at four o’clock in the afternoon is probably not a great idea, because by the end of the day, I have absolutely no resources on board, so I’m just gonna negotiate my way out of it every day. But if I put it at the head of the day, get it out of the way so I don’t have spent all my day thinking about it and negotiating it. Not only do I save resources, but I show up for it more consistently. I would also say, and you spoke to this really well earlier, just reworking expectations for what midlife health looks and feels like, because we’re still sold all this bullshit for lack of any other word to use there, around what we’re supposed to look like at midlife and what our weight is supposed to be, and all the things we’re supposed to still be able to do. And I’m not saying that you can’t be an incredibly robust, powerful human. Absolutely you can. But do you need to weigh the same that you did in high school? Do. Need to fit into the dress that you wore before your your first child, right? Like is being in a bikini the most important thing to you this year? I don’t know maybe it is, but What’s it costing you to pursue those things in other areas of your life? Because I guarantee it’s probably creating some stress elsewhere, I would say, also adapting your workout intensity.

Courtney Townley 40:21
So getting out of this all or nothing mentality, I can either move my body today or I’m just not going to do anything at all. Well, the example I used earlier, if I’m planning to go to the gym today, but like, right now, I feel like my body’s fighting something because my son’s been sick, and I’m so like, I’m not going to get sick, I’m not going to get sick. I’m doing all the things. But today, normally, I would go to the gym on Wednesday morning, and this morning I was like, You know what? I’m just gonna go for a walk today, because I can feel my body is working harder. I didn’t sleep great last night, and if I push it too hard, I played this game way too many times. I’ve seen the ending to this movie way too many times I’ll get sick, so I’m just going to extend myself the grace of not not exercising today, but just letting it look different. But I’m also not going to do that every day for the next three months, right? Which, again, I see a lot of people falling into the pattern of every single day they’re looking for a reason for why they shouldn’t have to push themselves, and that’s not okay either. No,

Laini Gray 41:25
no. And probably it comes back to, you know that reevaluation, right? It’s me down. What is it that you really value? What’s important to you? And that changes what what was important at 16 was not the same. At 25 was not the same. At 30 230-948-5562, so two, right? Our values change. But if we don’t sit down and actually re evaluate those, then we start trying to do the old behaviors, or we don’t take action of new behaviors. So we have to understand what about what are our values? What do we want out of life? And then I always say, what brings you joy? Yeah. And when you really understand what brings you joy, then you can be more specific about which actions serve you the best, or which behaviors or which habits, and put those into, you know, a consistent schedule or routine that serves you so that you have more joy, or you fulfill the values that are most important to you.

Laini Gray 42:20
And I think that’s one of the things we’re in, that rushed pattern of life that we’re so used to, we don’t even remember what’s important to us. And that’s one conversation might say, What? What makes you happy? Most midlife women say, I don’t know. Yeah, okay, well, if you don’t know, you’re not going to excel at your workouts, you’re not going to excel at meal prepping or whatever it is, you’re not going to finish writing the book, because you don’t even know how you run. You don’t even know what makes you tick on the inside, like we really have to get tap into our wisdom and who we are so that we can move forward and have this amazing next chapter of life.

Courtney Townley 42:55
Well, not only are people not taking the time to do that reflection, but because they’re not taking the time. They’re then looking to other people to tell them what makes them happy, to tell them what makes them healthy, to tell them what nourishes them. And it’s like, oh my god, stop it. Yeah. Like, stop and consider your own standards for your own life. That’s an awesome place to start. You use like we’ve talked about nourishing and depleting. You’ve also used like the happiness and the joy. Like, to me, they all go in the same camp, and I put them all under the umbrella of power, because I talk a lot about power in my community, and the way that I describe power is anything that just puts more life into your life. Period, whether that’s joy or nourishing or something that makes you more resilient or stronger or more capable or more focused power is simply the things that you are doing that are putting that’s putting more life into your life.

Courtney Townley 43:46
Maybe it’s, maybe it’s hormone therapy, yeah, maybe that’s putting more life into your life. Great. That’s more power for you. And with more power, basically that means you have more resource availability, yeah. And when you have more resource availability, you live your life differently. So that’s really, I think, the essence of what we’re talking about. Okay, to close this out, I mean, I think we’ve talked a lot about mindset shifts so far in this episode today. But are there any other mindset shifts that you would want to give to a woman who’s listening that is really in the throes of the menopausal transition, struggling with kind of the change, ever changing hormones, and also wanting to be consistent, but struggling to actually do that. Well,

Laini Gray 44:26
the one thing we didn’t really talk about but doing less, yeah, well, being okay with doing less, the whole C’s get degrees kind of thing, because that’s the other thing, is that we just call the whole project get degrees. But most everyone that I talk to can’t sit still. It’s so they can’t be bored. No, they can’t sit without their phone or the TV, sit outside and just just be for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And yet, that is where the magic happens. So being okay with slowing down, yeah, we have to. Take some of that off. I think that’s really important. And then I forgot the question Courtney,

Courtney Townley 45:05
oh, I was at any other mindset shifts for people, yes,

Laini Gray 45:08
so, so doing less, and then remembering that, do you want to be the same person you are right now? Who do you want to be? Who are you? Who do you want to be? And just shifting that conversation just a little bit, and you leaned into it with exercise. I just had a call yesterday, and we had talked about, if you finish the workout and you feel completely exhausted, exhausted, maybe it wasn’t the right workout. And she’s like, I feel like that every single time I go to this particular workout class. Yeah? Like, that’s not good. Now your resources are gone. Yeah, right. How can we shift that and and being open to understanding that our next chapter may look different, and that’s okay. That’s okay if

Courtney Townley 45:49
you kind of think of energy as money, right? Like if I go out and spend all my money on buying a Porsche, yeah, okay, now I have a Porsche, but then that means I can’t go out meet with my husband, I can’t take the exercise class that I love, I can’t buy that sweater that I liked, I can’t pay for groceries.

Laini Gray 46:06
Is that, why don’t we visit? Totally,

Courtney Townley 46:09
totally, why that Porsche that’s collecting dust in my garage? No, I don’t have a Porsche, but, but, yeah, I think it’s really helpful to look at it through that lens, because our resources, time, energy, mental bandwidth, are limited, and if we spend them all in one area, which I see so many women putting all their resources to health and well being, and it’s like, okay, but is that where you want to spend all your energy in your lifetime? I hope not. Yeah. So how are you conserving energy for those other areas? Or they do the opposite. They put all their energy elsewhere, and then there’s nothing left over for them. Like both are absolutely true.

Courtney Townley 46:46
A couple mindset shifts, I would mention, are just self compassion, especially when you are deep in the throes of that chemistry chaos, like you aren’t sleeping well and you haven’t for weeks, or you’re struggling with your immunity, or all of a sudden you have some joint flare up, which is a big byproduct of going through the menopausal transition. For a lot of people, in those moments, you can fight your body, or you can be kind to your body and say, okay, health today, self care today looks like extending myself a little more grace and compassion. Yeah, doesn’t mean it’s gonna be here forever, but for today, that’s what self care looks like.

Courtney Townley 47:28
And the other thing I would say, because I think it’s so under looked, and I probably mention it in every podcast, because it’s so underlooked or overlooked, is just celebrating small wins, right? Like when we tend to always see the gap, when we tend to see all the places we could do better, it gets really deflating. But if you’re looking for the things that you did show up for today, the places you did feel powerful, the places you did feel joyful, right? Like it incentivizes you to do more of that tomorrow. So that simple practice can go a really long way. Okay, so closing thoughts, Laini on this whole conversation of the chemistry of consistency

Laini Gray 48:09
and yeah, I think it’s just a conversation that has to be had over and over again. We need to be kind of kind to ourselves during this, because things are shifting and we don’t necessarily know what tomorrow is going to bring, how we’re going to feel and to be kind to ourselves through that. And then also really just take some time to sit down and re evaluate what’s important and where you want to go when you do that, and you’re very clear about what do I want from life? Who do I want to be? Where do I want to be? 510, 1520, years from now, then we can start to establish those habits. And yes, consistency is a part of that. If you only do the habit once a month, you might not get there very quickly.

Courtney Townley 48:49
Yeah, love that. So good. I would say, just as a closing thought that I think as women, we have been very conditioned to think that consistency is following a list of rules and regulations or following a protocol or following the advice of someone who knows better. And I just want to challenge everyone who’s listening to maybe recognize that midlife is an amazing opportunity to become consistent with identifying for yourself where the unnecessary stressors are right and reduce those to the degree that you can.

Courtney Townley 49:30
And also, like I said earlier, deciding which intentional stressors are worth leaning into. And so for a lot of you, that’s going to be slowing down, the act of slowing down is going to feel like an intentional stressor, or maybe having that difficult conversation with your husband about whatever the thing is that’s been bringing you all this internal friction is going to be the intentional discomfort that you need to lean into, or maybe you need to set more boundaries right with. Your work schedule, or with whatever the thing is, with the sugar in your kitchen, I don’t know, but maybe that’s your intentional stressor that you need to lean into. So when we start looking at consistency through that lens, it becomes so much more malleable, and it shifts as we shift. It evolves with us, rather than us always trying to get back to something or trying to shove ourselves into some box of expectation that society has for us.

Courtney Townley 50:28
And the last thing I just want to say is a reminder that March 3 through April 3 of 2025 which is the year that this podcast is airing in, I’m hosting the full Consistency Code course, which is a course that I’ve run for almost a decade, and it really dives deep into the meat of the types of things that we’ve talked about in this episode today. So you can head on over to graceandgrit.com/thecode to find out all the details of that program. And I would love to see you there. Thank you so much lady for being here. Thank you all right, I’ll see you soon.

Courtney Townley 51:10
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.